Die Zauberflöte
A singspiel by Wolgang Amadeus Mozart
Met - October 11, 2014
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| Photo credit: Met |
I was so looking forward and ready to like this Die Zauberflöte. It had a lot of good
things going for it on paper. For starters, it was finally performed in its
original German version, very welcome news after the Met butchered this opera
over the last few years by offering a reduced English version as a Christmas
holiday treat for families. I (somehow) get the need to sell tickets but please
please Mr. Gelb do not tamper with Mozart ever again. It’s really perfection as
originally conceived and, also, English translations of any opera sabotage its
musicality. Honestly, how hard it is to push the little subtitle button in
front of you? Thank goodness this year the “approachable” English kids show is
Hansel and Gretel (which I don’t care for). I was also excited to catch Adam
Fischer doing Wolfie again (loved his semi-staged Nozze a couple of summers
ago), not to mention bass René Pape as Sarastro and soprano Pretty Yende as
Pamina.
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| Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met |
Tonight, however, it was one of those rare times where no matter
how solid the musicians and singers, the production managed to negatively
affect the whole experience. The biggest problem was the lack of cohesion
throughout. True that the Flute is a hodgepodge of improbable elements: we’re
in a mythological age and magic land where there are wild animals, African
slaves, professional bird-catchers, classical temples, Egyptian gods and
western music. This opera, however, also offers the opportunity to an
imaginative director to create a wonderful magic world and unfortunately Julie
Taymor’s production just missed the mark. The supposedly unifying theme was
provided by giant transparent structures in the shapes of triangles, circles
and squares, functioning as the core of the sets framing each scene. While
maybe a good idea in principle, these things felt like clunky cheap worn out
plastic, badly illuminated by neon and also disturbingly noisy, squeaking and
creaking at every scene change. Some of the choral scenes in the last act felt
unfinished, with a plastic temple so far back that I almost felt the Met’s
stagehands peeking behind it and what looked like bright white plastic tent
material on the floors and walls. The Papageno/Papagena reunion happened over a
(noisy) mobile plexiglass staircase. When squeaky plastic seems to be the
dominant theme of a production something is wrong.
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| Photo credit: Met |
Costumes, too, were disappointingly all over the place, some of
them refined and elaborate (the Queen of the Night and Tamino, both
Japanese-inspired), others put together at the last minute by a team of
children armed with scissors and cardboard (the temple chorus, at times even
sporting a ridiculous rainbow across their chest), others again out of a
Mexican lucha libre match
(Monostatos, who also wore inexplicable high heels, essential to rape
maidens?).
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| Photo credit: Met |
I enjoyed only a handful of special effects in Taymor’s
production: the kabuki puppetry (particularly in the dinner scene, where shiny
food magically appears floating in the dark), the trials by water and fire
(with the loving couple going up and down through a fluid sheer silk column)
and the spirits’ different appearances (now floating on a flying bird, now on
the shoulders of other characters).
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| Photo credit: Sara Krulwich / The New York Times |
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| Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met |
While generally singspiel is not my favorite, it does work with
the complicated symbolic plot. All singers were, though not extraordinary,
consistently solid across the board. Mozartian tenor Toby Spence as
Tamino delivered convincing expressions of pure love and virtue. Baritone Markus
Werba as Papageno had good comic presence and was entertaining, at times
silly (I could live without the “my name is Geno, Papa-Geno” gag, that’s
definitely not Mozartian) but all in all pleasant. Too bad poor Papageno was wearing
a green ill-fitting pyjama that had nothing to do with the rest of the costumes
(and seemed to have been recycled from a different production). René Pape,
today on double duty impressively switching from Verdi (as Banquo in Macbeth’s
matinee) to Mozart, as Sarastro in the Flute’s evening performance, was simply
glorious, exuding charisma every time he was on stage, with his commanding and
seductive bass. I just felt really bad for Pape having to wonder around the
stage looking like a huge yellow piñata with a Japanese hat on. I get the sun metaphor, but still...
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| Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met |
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| Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met |
Soprano Ana
Durlovski as the Queen of the Night had good technique but her voice was
just not strong enough for the Met, which is a shame because the whole show
shines a bit less brightly if her big second act showstopper “Der
Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen” doesn't blow the roof off the place in a
super-human fit of vengeful rage. Young soprano Pretty
Yende was the loveliest Pamina, with a beautiful clean sound and at times
really soaring and filling the Met, way more than the Queen of the Night. Yende
did share with Pape the prize as worst dressed of the evening, with an ill-fitting
electric blue gown plastered by a color block apron stripe in the front. I felt
relief for Pamina when in the final scene she finally ascends to the temple in
a simple elegant white tunic.
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| Photo credit: Met |
The boys performing the three spirits (Connor
Tsui, Sebastian Berg and Andre Gulick) delivered some
unbelievable singing, eery and powerful. It was truly impressive (and slightly
uncanny) to hear these piercing sounds from such young singers, whose costumes, for
once, kind of worked with the characters (white body paint, diapers and long
white beards). The three ladies (Amy Shoremount-Obra, Renee Tatum
and Margaret Lattimore) were also vocally strong and had good comic
presence, though at times Taymor had them mess around too much with masks
sitting on top of their fully dyed blue faces and one single oversized hand - go
figure.
Die Zauberflöte’s score is fantastic, multi-faceted and expressive through a
broad range of characters: illuminated priests, lusty slaves, pure innocent
love, raging evil queens, happy bird-catchers and a variety of spirits and
fairies. Ivan Fischer’s conducting was brilliant - if I closed my eyes
it sounded all blissful, wonderful and inspiring, unfortunately the production
and costumes just did not work as well as they could have given the world of possibilities that this opera offers.
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| Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met |
- Lui
& Lei
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